One piece of Steve Reich’s in particular though grabbed me when I first heard it 15 years ago, and I don’t think it will ever let go: Music for 18 Musicians. An acquaintance lent me the disc and said he thought I might like it. I put on my headphones and hit play, and after a short period of acclimation was blissfully lost for the next hour. Despite feeling ambivalent about a lot of minimalism, 18 is my favorite piece of music, hands down.
Take the musical ideas behind Four Organs (steady pulses, phase shifting, slow evolution, others) and then replace the rigorous organs with singers and players of instruments with widely varying textures (strings, pianos, clarinets, marimbas). Give the whole thing a rich harmonic structure. Divide it into sections with melodies that expand and collapse, or build up in surprising ways. Make it cathartic and uplifting and human.
It’s still not for everyone, but adventurous listeners should give it a try when you have an hour or so to spare. Don’t commit to the whole piece necessarily—the full hour is just in case it catches hold of you—but do commit to listening past the “Pulses” section. That’s just the intro, and what sounds at first like a frantic hammering quickly mutates into a framework to hang the larger, wavelike movements on. It really starts to kick in around the 15 minute mark, when Section 3B begins.
There used to be several good recordings of it on YouTube that have all since disappeared, which is a shame because it raises the barrier for entry; I would have loved to link one here. It’ll really take you for a ride though, if you let it.